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Greg’s column: Are there too many awards shows?

This is my weekly entertainment industry column which ran today in the LA Daily News and other newspapers. Hope you enjoy it:

Does Hollywood need to pat itself on the back so darn much?

The ratings for Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards were absolutely abysmal – the lowest in the 13 years that the three-hour kudo-fest has aired on NBC.

Some say audiences dwindle when little-seen movies like “Slumdog Millionaire” dominate (it won four awards, including Best Dramatic Feature) along with TV winners “Mad Men” and “30 Rock,” which are acclaimed but do not have huge audiences.

I don’t buy that for a minute. Does anyone really think the ratings would have spiked if more popular fare like “The Dark Knight” took Best Picture and “Two and a Half Men” won best TV comedy?

C’mon!

Regardless of who wins those trophies, you still have a star-studded telecast with the likes of Clint Eastwood, Jennifer Lopez, Tom Cruise, Anne Hathaway, Leonardo DiCaprio and, of course, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

I think audiences are just suffering from a severe case of awards-show fatigue.

Consider this: In the five days leading up to the Globes, the stars were at the Palm Springs Film Festival Awards, People’s Choice Awards (televised on CBS), Critics Choice Awards (televised on VH1), the annual American Film Institute lunch, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts’ glitzy tea party at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Still to come within the next six weeks are the televised Screen Actors Guild Awards, NAACP Image Awards, Independent Spirit Awards, Grammy Awards and the non-televised Directors Guild Awards, Producers Guild Awards and Writers Guild Awards.
“I do think that to some people, there is an awards fatigue as these weeks go by,” observed Dave Karger, senior editor at Entertainment Weekly. “The vast majority of the public doesn’t know what the Broadcast Critics are, they just really focus on the Golden Globes and the Oscars.”

Karger, who appears frequently on “The Today Show,” added that “as much as I love an awards show – and if there was one on every night, I would still watch it – I do sometimes feel that there are too many. And too many that seem very similar and take place the same week.”

By holding so many kudo-fests in such a short period of time, viewers do seem to be turned off – ratings for all the major awards shows have been on a slide in recent years.

This year, some 14.6 million people watched the Globes, down from 20 million in 2007, the last time the full ceremony was held. Last year’s announcement of the winners during the writers strike drew a mere 6 million viewers.

Still, this year’s Globe telecast will be one of the top-rated shows of last week, although – as is network television – less dominant than in the past.

So it doesn’t look like anyone is ready to cancel their awards show, and if stars like Pitt, Jolie, Hathaway, Sean Penn, Mickey Rourke, Josh Brolin, Meryl Streep, Kate Winslet and other 2009 Academy Award hopefuls don’t show up to everything, they hurt their chances of winning Oscar gold.

Still, is it worth making it a full-time job?

“There’s so many other events that people don’t even know about,” Karger said. “It has to be exhausting for these people to be on all the time … when you know all eyes are on you. But, what’s the alternative? Not doing any of these events and not getting nominated? Most of these people realize that it’s part of the game and it’s great for their career.”

The intensive two-month awards season will conclude on Feb. 22 with the Academy Awards. If history is any indication, what happens between now and then can have a tremendous impact on who wins the Oscar – the ultimate prize.